Bio

Andrés Caicedo is a Colombian environmental social scientist. He joined UBC as an IBioS Postdoctoral Research Fellow and is based at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability. At IRES, Andrés co-coordinates the Collaborative Conservation Leadership (CCL) program with Juliet Lu, Claire Kremen, and Conny Scheffler. He is also a member of the research groups led by Juliet Lu and Claire Kremen. His research examines how environmental justice and environmental conservation take shape amid the extractive ecologies of oil palm plantations and coal mining in Colombia. His doctoral research at UC Berkeley argues that the arrival, reproduction, and daily maintenance of Colombia’s oil palm industry rely on racialized and gendered narratives and practices of plant health and disease. His current project examines how campesino communities in the high-altitude Colombian Andes contest corporate conservation projects and develop locally rooted initiatives to care for the Páramo de Pisba in the department of Boyacá amid agrarian extractivism.

Geographical area of research

Latin America, particularly Colombia’s southern Pacific coast and the high-altitude Andes Mountains.